Words

A is for public reminder of guiltB is for making mistakes spelling “quilt”C is the Bishop’s affirmative oceanD is a canon in retrograde motionE‘s for dyslexia — or maybe not;F is for fomething fo old we forgotG is for Innocence, horrid and pimplyH is for ‘N’, which is putting it simplyI is for ‘C’, because… oh, never mind;J is a bird (the pedestrian kind)K is for anything but ‘kangaroo’L is a magazine;M is one, too.

N is for Nothing.

O is for stories of Heaven and HellP in the stairway is starting to smellQ is for billiard ball — where did the hair go?R is (we think) for cogitamus, ergo…S is egregious; no need to name itT is too weak, but on whom shall we blame it?U is the answer, or so say the sermons —V don’t do anything wrong, for ve’re Chermans.W stands for itself, ‘double-V’X should be crossed out — but how could it be?Y is the soldier that dies on command
and Z is for functional, harmless and bland

Another left-handed homage to Poe. This one is definitely not for kids.

I.

Hear the ringing of the bells,
Front-door bells!
Time to open up the door and see what this one sells:Thirty Days to Total Fitness?
“Act today! You’ll get a present!”
Or a mad Jehovah’s Witness
Come to make herself unpleasant?
Come to pry at your endurance
Every Tupperwhere you look?
Come to sell you life insurance,
Or a Dianetics book?
Come to ring upon the bell,
on the bell, bell bell —
You can never, ever tell
by the bell
if they mean you ill or well.
Then the buzzing of the clock you
couldn’t stand at 5 a.m.,
Or the loud alarms that shock you
When a burglar breaks your lock? You
Wax nostalgic over them.
You can never, ever tell
Not by sight or sound or smell,
Who’s come ringing at the bell,
at the bell, bell, bell;Damn the bell, bell, bell, bell,
bell, bell, bell;
Something worse than just a curse upon the bell.

II.

Hear the droning of the bells,
Bismuth bells,
From the stern monotony of bureaucratic hells!
How you whimper, whimper, whimper
As their voices crash to earth,
Drag your drooping spirits limper
And exungulate your mirth!
How the hellish, heavy thunder
Pounding down about your head
Seems to split the world asunder
With the crying of the dying
And the groaning of the dead!
As the bells strain in their courses,
Comes Apocalypse, no less:
Unimaginable forces —
Seven wraiths on demon horses —
OH MY GOD! THE I.R.S.!!

Carried forward by the knells
Of the bells, bells, bells,
And the pounding of the hoofbeats
That come raining down like shells —
To the bleating and the beating
of the bells, bells, bells
Of the bells, etc.
And the taxes, and the bills!
And the bills, bills, bills,
For they’ve got you by the balls
With the bills
And the sense of deep futility that flatteningly falls
On the balls, balls, balls, balls,
Balls, balls, balls
From the tolling of the bureaucratic bells.

III.

Hear the boinging of the bells,
Rubber bells!
What a world of imbecility their peal compels!
How they blither, blither, blither
In the trembling ear of night;
And their music, bumbling hither,
Makes the cerebellum wither
With its idiot’s delight.
And you can’t escape the feeling
As you stand amid the din:
If the bells continue pealing,
Soon you won’t have any skin.
They are neither dead nor living —
Neither vengeful nor forgiving —
They are boobs,
And their god it is who giggles
As he jiggles, jiggles, jiggles,
Jiggles panic from the bells,
From the bells;
And his frilly wimple wiggles,
And his merry organ swells
And accompanies the bells —
Oh, the bells, bells, bells,
Ugh! the bells, bills, boils, biles,
bowels, bulls, bells!
Oh, the drooling and the puling of the bells.

When I was growing up, there was a stretch of dirt road that led through the marsh not far from my home. The road is long since paved over, and the marsh is houses; but back then, I used to see hundreds of frogs and turtles killed trying to get from one side of the road to the other. I’m not sure which amazed me more: the fact that this dirt track got enough traffic to flatten so many animals, or the fact that the animals kept trying so hard to cross from one unpromising bit of marsh to the other. I wondered what was so important that these creatures felt they needed to risk their lives. Something beautiful, I hoped. Something… unexpected.

Many years later, the memory of that road led me to write this poem. There is more music in this short verse than in anything else I have ever done. It needs to be read aloud: if you listen very carefully to the last stanza as it is read, you can hear the distant, whispery Voice of the Turtle in the background.

Where, oh where do the turtles go
when they go
so
slow?

Turtle, and tortoise, and terrapin, too
Wend their way at the end of the day
To the beautiful sandy shore of the bay,
And there they bask in the evening glow
As the sun sinks low
so
slow.

And what do the turtles do, when they go
where they go
so
slow?

Turtle, and tortoise, and terrapin, too
Join hands (or fins) — and the dance begins,
In gentle pirouettes and spins.
They dance for the sun, as it sinks to rest
in the distant West,
And they sing a melodious terrapin tune
to the rising moon.
If you listen — shhhh! — you can almost hear,
As they sing their song in a voice so clear,
And sweet,
and low
and oh,
so
slow.

The Dread Pirate Valdez is a character who’s mentioned in Shakespeare, but who never actually appears on-stage. The name suggested certain things to me. I don’t usually get this obvious with a message, but even back in 1993 — when I first wrote it — it made me furious what was being done to our oceans. The situation has not improved.

Night. The ancient lighthouse-keeper
Looks to the sea, as the dark grows deeper.
He turns to his children, and this he says:
“My children, beware of the Pirate Valdez!”

“He sails the seas in a leaky scow,
With garbage piled from stern to prow.
Used syringes are his treasure,
And oily sludge his greatest pleasure.

“He stands on his pile of smelly things,
And this is the terrible song he sings:

‘Hooray for trash, and oil, and sludge —
I love it more than chocolate fudge!
I love it more than wealth or pelf!
I love it more than life itself!’

“He picks up a barrel of stinky goo
And throws it into the ocean blue.
Then the Pirate laughs ’til he splits his sides
As it floats ashore on the morning tides.

“‘Hooray!’ he sings, ‘for the color grey!
All of the Earth should look this way!’“

The ancient lighthouse-keeper turns;
A terrible light in his dark eye burns.
He looks to the sea, and again he says:
“My children — beware of the Pirate Valdez!”